Mariasama is Watching the RDF
by Holy Chaos
Summary: A Mariasama ga Miteru Robotech crossover. Two years after the Zentradi bombardment of Earth, Veritech pilot Osagawara Sachicko is in for a surprise when flying patrol over the ruins of her old high school.


Maria-sama is Watching the RDF 

Disclaimer: Neither Robotech nor Maria-sama ga Miteru belong to me. Robotech belongs to Harmony Gold and Maria-sama to Geneon Entertainment (among others). I'm just borrowing them for a bit.

                The sky was a bright, eye hurting blue, unbroken by even the faintest trace of cloud of any kind, not even a tiny wisp of cirrus cloud. The only thing in that vast expanse of blue was a single, solitary shadow that would have been little more than a speck for any observer below, had there been anyone there to see it. If any hypothetical observer had been there to see it, and had they possessed a pair of fairly strong binoculars or some other form of optical magnifiers, they would have been able to tell what the tiny speck really was, a Veritech Fighter, and not just any Veritech either, for most of the RDF fighters were painted a standardised brown colour, with few exceptions. The most famous of these exceptions were those belonging to the first human-Zentradi couple and ace pilot team Max and Miriya Sterling and the near legendary Skull One. The pilot of this Veritech was not in the same league as those luminaries, but she had enough of a reputation to warrant her own paint scheme, chevrons of red rose petals on a white background with a pair of full red blossoms on the tails.

                Inside the cockpit, Rose Squadron Leader, who preferred the name she had been born with, Ogasawara Sachiko, sighed as she banked her fighter into a shallow dive and cut back the throttle as she approached her patrol area and pondered what has brought her to where she was now. The year she graduated from Lillian Girls School on the outskirts of Ueno had been the year when recruiting for the newly formed Robotech Defence Force had finally hit its stride and nearly every nation in the world had been clamouring to provide members. Without telling anyone, Sachiko has signed up and been accepted and not even the Ogasawara Zaibatsu's influence had been enough to revoke the decision, getting Sachiko away from the arranged marriage that had been expected of her. Some unknown individual within the family though had pulled enough strings to get her into pilot training and Sachiko was unsure whether to be annoyed or grateful, for it turned out that she enjoyed it. She lacked the drive and competitive nature to keep up with the fighter pilots, but she had been more than happy to spend out her service piloting Cat's-Eye reconnaissance planes. She had even managed to draw a posting to Macross Island, the top billet in the entire RDF.

                Then had come the fateful day when the SDF-1 was due to launch, the same day the Zentradi arrived and attacked. Sachiko had been running routine patrol and had done what any sensible Cat's-Eye pilot would have done when the first wave of fighters had come swarming out of the drop pods. Shut down her radar and fall back to base hoping that the invaders wouldn't notice one unarmed craft in the mass of fighters launching from Macross City and the carriers Prometheus and Daedelus. Fortunately for Sachiko she had still been in her Cat's-Eye when the SDF-1 had executed its fateful spacefold, taking most of Macross Island and a lot of the surrounding ocean with it out beyond Pluto's orbits. Cat's-Eyes were designed to operate at high altitude and even in space and that had saved Sachiko where many others had perished from the sudden decompression.

                Of course, that hadn't saved the SDF-1 from Zentradi pursuit and the constant attacks whittled down fighter squadrons. The onboard factories had been able replace the fighters with no difficulty, provided they had a supply of raw materials, but the pilots were another matter and Sachiko and all the other Cat's-Eye pilots found themselves pressed into filling out the numbers, even as an aggressive recruiting drive drew new recruits from the civilian population of Macross Island that had been dragged along in the space-fold. Sachiko honestly didn't know how she managed to survive throughout the year long journey back to Earth, especially as so many others around her fell, but the fates were kind and she returned from every battle unscathed, though the same couldn't always be said of her fighter. She had even come through that titanic clash with Dolza's fleet in one piece, but many times she wished she hadn't, for fate would have been kinder to have been spared the sight of the world of her birth bathed in flame, killing billions. Though it was rarely spoken of, that was something that everyone on the SDF-1, both the crew and the civilian population, carried with them.

                Still, even in the darkest of hours, there was always hope and while most of the Earth's surface had been scoured down to bare rock, tiny parts survived. Those surviving pockets generally fell into several categories, the most common by number being tiny islands, mostly in the Pacific though some in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans as well, that were so small they were overlooked. The other most common was valleys high in the Himalayas and the Andes where life was harsh, but endurable and like their ocean counterparts, easily overlooked from orbit. The other main groups where small areas that had been protected from the effects of the initial bombardment due to confluences of geography that had not been targeted before the Earth's defenders had sprung into action and a few areas that no one could readily explain.

                It was one of the latter two that was the real reason for Sachiko's melancholy, but it was also the reason that Sachiko refused to let anyone else fly that patrol route when her squadron had it. Flying low and slow, she cruised over the crater that had once been Ueno City in Japan, a place that she had once called home. Just outside where the city had been, mostly shielded from the blast by the surrounding mountains, was a patch of green, a patch that was slowly, but surely growing in area, showing the tenacity of life, growing and pushing outwards, despite the devastation. But this patch of green held something that many others of these pockets of life didn't, and that was ruins, ruins that were very important to Sachiko for they were the remains of Lillian High School where Sachiko had once attended. It was a place that held many memories, some bad, most good, though she could no longer look upon what remained of the place with a pang of sorrow for so many of those she had known there who were gone, along with so many others. Sachiko had been able to track down one other alumni of Lillian who was still alive who was not only a contemporary of hers but was none other than the infamous Rosa Canina, better known now by her proper name Kanina Shizuka, an opera singer with a voice that could stop a Zentradi in their tracks. But she was the only one.

                Sachiko made three passes over the school, low to the ground and as slow as she could without losing lift. The buildings below were a blur, but experience at spotting things at high speed let her pick out details that others would have missed. The main part of the school was still intact, though neglect and the weather were doing their best to change that and while most of the older trees, mostly gingko and sakura, hadn't done too well, many young saplings had already sprouted up to replace them, as well as spreading out into the more devastated areas. What really brought a lump to Sachiko's throat though was the fact that the Rose Mansion still stood, bringing back memories of long afternoons spent their, doing one thing or another for the Yamayurikai. That in turn brought back the memories of those who had been there with her and a painful reminder that they were gone.

                On the third pass though, looping back from over a few buildings of Hanedara Academy's, Lillian's all-male counterpart, for one last look, Sachiko spotted something dashing from the trees towards the main buildings. Their relative speeds were too high for Sachiko to get a good look, but it was more than enough to spike Sachiko's curiosity. She reached out and pushed the lever that transformed the Veritech from fighter mode into guardian mode and braked, hard, deceleration pushing her against the straps of the pilot's chair. Even with her quick action though, the figure was gone by the time Sachiko brought her hovering Veritech back around. Still, she wasn't going to let it go and it was a simple enough matter to land on what had once been the athletics field, the overgrown grass giving the Veritech's feet some cushioning as they touched ground.

                Sachiko wanted to jump out of the cockpit the instant the Veritech was safely parked, but the part of her that was an officer of the RDF sternly reined the rest of her in and reminded her to follow procedure. Reluctantly, but dutifully, Sachiko turned on the radio and called back to base. "Rose Leader to Okinawa Base. Come in Okinawa Base."

                "Okinawa Base here Rose Leader," came the audio only reply. "What is it?"

                "I'm at Li… the Rose Garden," Sachiko said, catching herself in time to change to the official area for the small area of green where she was. "I just spotted something going into the buildings. I was moving too fast to get a good look, but I am going to investigate further."

                "Understood Rose Leader. Report in once you've finished your investigation. And Sachiko-kun, be careful."

                A faint smile tugged at Sachiko's lips at the final rejoinder in her native Japanese rather than standard English. "I will be Asuma-kun," she replied in the same language before slipping back into English her official position. "Rose Leader out."

                She pulled her gun and a knife out of the small armoury case under her seat, slipping them into holsters built into her flight suit while mentally shaking her head at Asuma's antics. She had made it very clear to the comm. tech that she had no interest in him when he had first propositioned her and he had taken it gracefully enough, but that stop him from acting like a protective older brother. Fortunately for him, he never took it past the point where it got annoying. Amusing, even silly on occasions and perhaps a little pathetic, but never annoying. But curiosity about what she had seen drove all other thoughts out of Sachiko's head as she climbed down to the ground and began exploring.

                Even weathered and damaged, for they had not escaped entirely unscathed, the school buildings presented a multitude of places to hide and the time that Sachiko had taken to turn about and land had given whatever she had seen more than ample opportunity to get to anyone of the buildings. Something told Sachiko though that the best place to start looking though was the Rose Mansion. It was a hunch with no rational basis, but it was better than no plan at all, so Sachiko headed there, cautious and careful, but still purposeful.

                When she got to the Rose Mansion, Sachiko was surprised to see that not only was it in better shape than most of the other buildings, but someone had even attempted repairs. In at least three places where flying debris had pierced the wall, the holes had been boarded over, if inexpertly, and the same went for most of the shattered windows, though some on the upper floor had been left open. That meant that someone had been at the school and not only survived the massive Zentradi bombardment, but had been living here in the aftermath and Sachiko's heart went out in sympathy to whoever it was. However, that only made Sachiko even more determined to find whoever it was and take them back with her to what passed for civilisation on this part of the planet, where they could at least get proper food and medical care.

                Carefully Sachiko eased open the door to the Rose Mansion, calling out to anyone who might have been there. She got no response, but that wasn't surprising, since whoever was living there was obviously as timid as a rabbit, judging by their response to the Veritech. So Sachiko entered, firmly ignoring the memories that being in the building brought back and began searching. The first room she looked in didn't have anyone in it, but it did yield some rather surprising results. In it was a large pot, obviously liberated from the school kitchens, sitting on top of a small gas cooker and Sachiko nodded in approval. Considering most of the water would be from rather dubious sources at best, it made sense to boil it before drinking it first. She was about to leave when a faint scent tickled her sense of small and she scrunched her nose in displeasure as she spotted the bowl of ginkgo nuts sitting not too far from the pot. It made sense given the number of ginkgo trees in the school grounds, but her stomach churned at the thought, no matter what Shimako might have once said on the matter.

                Sachiko closed the door and continued on her search, scouring the lower floor of the house. Though none of them yielded the person living there, several did betray signs of human habitation. One even had several bookshelves in it that must have been laboriously dragged from the library to the Rose Mansion, their contents painstakingly replaced, though several more piles of books littered the floor, all their spines sporting catalogue stamps from Lillian's School Library. Lower floor searched, Sachiko debated whether to go up or down. The basement had been used only for storage in her student days, but it would have been a simple matter to clean it out and would provide an area sheltered from the elements, where as the unrepaired windows on the upper floor suggested a lower level of liveability, but a better vantage point to observe intruders while remaining hidden.

                After several moments thought, Sachiko headed downstairs, reasoning that whoever was here would want to remain close to what possessions they had and the basement was most likely where they were. She was partly right at least, for the basement was where the mysterious refugee obviously lived. There were several more piles of books from the school library and other assorted items that had been salvaged from other parts of the school, including what appeared to be a pair of tennis rackets turned into makeshift snowshoes, and a large pile of blankets and an inexpertly stitched together pillow. But whoever was living there was not in evidence. With a sigh Sachiko turned back up the stairs and hoped that whoever had been there hadn't snuck out the front door while she was in the basement.

                Reaching the ground floor once again, she turned and closed the door behind her and when she turned back she got the largest fright of her life, surpassing even being caught in an unstable space-fold. One moment she had been alone and the next she was not. In front of her stood a woman about her own age, wearing a worn and faded Lillian uniform that was perhaps a size to small for her and a messily knotted scarf, though the reason for that was obvious as Sachiko looked longer, for her left wrist was roughly bandaged with a length of cloth that looked to have been torn from another uniform and she held it close to her side, almost cradling it. That wasn't the only sign of the rough life that she had been living, just the most obvious. Her skin was dull and rough, even to the naked eye, just as telling of too many hours spent in the sun as the peeling blisters on the tip of her nose. The skin over her knees was scratched and calloused from too many hours spent on them in the dirt and given her barefoot state Sachiko wouldn't have been surprised to find the calluses on her toes were like iron. Her hair fell to just past shoulder length and had been pulled back and tied with bits of strings, leaving her face clear, the most prominent feature being the wide brown eyes that spoke clearly of hope, fear, sorrow and loneliness and the more Sachiko looked into them the more the sense of the familiar grew.

                It was the apparition who finally answered the question of where Sachiko remembered her from. As Sachiko stood looking mutely at her, she returned the look and finally her right hand rose to clutch at something on her chest, hidden by the sloppy arms of the scarf. "Onee-sama," she whispered, letting go of whatever she held, and Sachiko's knees went weak as she stared at the silver cross on the silver rosary, plain and unadorned save for some very basic engraving. She knew it well, for a copy of it hung around her own neck when she was off duty and for years of students attending Lillian it had been the identifying of the Red Rose Family, headed by _Rose Chinesis_, a position Sachiko herself had once heard. And there was only one person that Sachiko knew who would wear the same rosary and call her Onee-sama.

                "Yumi-chan?" she asked, her voice wavering as tears began to well up in her eyes. "Is it really you?"

                The only answer was a wordless nod as the two women fell into each others arms, both of them to choked up with emotion to do anything but cry mixed tears of joy and grief. Joy for finding each other alive after so long when both had thought the other dead and grief for the fresh reminder of those others they had known who they would not be having miraculous reunions with. They collapsed to their knees as one, neither willing nor able to do anything but let the tears come and hold the other as tightly as possible. Neither of them could have said how much time had passed before they got control over themselves enough to carry on a proper conversation.

                "I suppose you're wondering how I survived?" Yumi asked in the silence that followed the tears.

                "A little," Sachiko replied. "But at the moment all I care about is that you're alive and not some figment of my imagination."

                "I'm real," Yumi assured her. "I'm very real."

                Another silence broke out and while it was neither awkward nor uncomfortable, neither woman knew what to say next and it just stretched out, finally being shattered by a beeping from Sachiko's wrist. She brought it up and looked at the watch built into the flight suit and swore in surprise when she saw the time.

                "I've got to get going," she muttered to herself. "They're going to start wondering where I am soon."

                Though Sachiko hadn't even realised that she was speaking out loud, it was loud enough for Yumi to hear every word and she grabbed at Sachiko's flight suit with her good hand.

                "Don't leave me," she said, the fear haunting her eyes coming to fore. "Don't leave me alone again, please!"

                Sachiko looked down into those desperate eyes and smiled softly. "Never again," she assured Yumi. "But I do have to go and I want you to come with me."

                "Really?" Yumi asked.

                "I promise," Sachiko assured her. "My Veritech's a 1-D, so the cockpit has two seats and there's nothing to stop you coming back with me."

                Yumi's face brightened, but then took on a worried look as she cast a glance at the door leading down to her shelter down in the basement.

                "We'll come back and get everything as soon as possible," Sachiko assured her, correctly interpreting the look on Yumi's face. "But you are all that's important to me at the moment. Come back with me, please."

                The despair in Sachiko's eyes mirrored the look that had been in Yumi's eyes just moments ago and Yumi was no more proof against it than Sachiko was and she nodded.

                Short minute later, Yumi was strapped into the rear seat of Sachiko's Veritech and Sachiko was guiding the mighty machine back into the air. Once they were well and truly airborne, Sachiko transformed the craft back into fighter mode and looped around in one final pass over Lillian and she had to fight off a smile. She knew that whatever happened from now one, she would no longer fly that patrol route with a heavy heart, and even there was still a trace of melancholy in seeing Lillian, the memories she had just made ensured that from then on, the joy would outway the sorrow. She waggled the Veritech's wings in a pilot's salute and shot off into the blue sky into a future that no longer looked so lonely.

Author's Notes: This unlikely cross over was created by five people each submitting a single series then drawing two out of a proverbial hat. To date, I am still the only one to actually complete theirs, though I think that's because I wrote a crossover rather than a fusion like everyone else attempted. Whatever the reason, its definitely fairly unique and not something that I would have normally attempted and I hoped you enjoyed it.


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